“Miki, I really admire the way you are able to be so present in the moment and are able to respond so well to what you see and sense. Just watching you in action makes this course worthwhile to me." —S.G., Litchfield, Connecticut, USA

”Miki's workshop was exceptional in giving an overview of the work, while calmly meeting the emotional challenges everyone brought to the table.” —Class participant

Our world trains us to think in terms of providing for everyone’s needs because they deserve it, earned it, or they possess the resources -- it's fair, socially just, supports equality or because people have rights. Instead, can we step outside this worldview to look at providing for everyone’s needs because those needs exist -- can we hold this basic reverence for life? Are we able to have a needs-based dialogue when such a reframe could alienate those who live in the worldview of earn/deserve?

How much money to pay? And how much money to ask for? The supply and demand logic basically say that we ask for the most that “the market can absorb” and pay “the least that we can get away with.” We can instead, we can engage in experiments that focus on connecting to and satisfying needs. We can also engage with our varying degrees of access to resources within the existing economy and consider how we want to make choices about resources, especially when we have access to power.

Do you want to increase your capacity to identify and connect with feelings and needs? Would you like to enhance your ability to translate judgments? Join Miki for this deep dive into feelings and needs.

When a participant's sister reveals the Ku Klux Klan broke into her home and dragged her towards a burning cross, it challenges her commitment to nonviolence. Miki shares a practice that, even in extreme polarization, connects freedom and healing in us all. Listen.

Excerpted from Miki's course Responding to the Call of Our Times in 2017.

A big part of why receiving feedback is so challenging is because so few people around us know how to give feedback untainted with criticism, judgment, or our personal upset. But, if we wait for others to offer us usable, digestible, manageable feedback, we will not likely receive sufficient feedback for our growth and learning. Instead, we can grow in our capacity to fish the pearl that’s buried within. Here are three specific suggestions for how.

We're in difficult times - possibly at the brink of extinction. What can we do in response? Some nonlinear steps: A.) Notice what isn't working; B.) Mourn so that we can move "towards" from an expanded space inside; C.) Analyze to bring a fuller understanding of what's happening and what's needed; D.) Reframe our inner and outer narratives; E.) Discern what we can contribute; F.) Care; and G.) Bring in support for more resilience and creativity.

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed – or locked into passivity? This course offers you a way out. Learn to change the way you perceive leadership, and you’ll help yourself respond more powerfully and proactively every day of your life – wherever you are – and whomever you’re with!

The preview session of this course is available for all to listen to and enjoy.

How do we address historical and present challenges regarding the invisibility of privilege and power? What can we do, especially if we are people with privilege, to transform these conditions? However challenging these kinds of situations are, and whatever our position, we can move towards more inclusivity by learning and doing significant inner and outer work.

What is it that we are taught we can’t have, and what is it that we are encouraged to pursue instead? This guide could help you see through what's hidden behind the curtain of our societal conditioning.

There's the real need. And then there's the privilege that’s offered as a substitute for it. Privilege substitutes support the existing structure of society. It can look to us as if giving up the privilege would amount to giving up everything -- if we don't believe the real needs can even be experienced. If we connected directly to the needs, we could become subversive, agents of change.